Singapore Country Guide

Tour Itineraries

Culture Vulture Tour

Find your way onto the MRT North East Line and get off at the Chinatown Station Exit A. This will deposit you on Pagoda Street, a pedestrianised shopping street and right in the heart of Chinatown itself. A few houses down the road is the Chinatown Heritage Centre, an excellent and informative museum about Chinatown's history and development. Admissions are SGD10 for adults and SGD6 for children (3-12 years).

Street in Chinatown

Keep on walking down
the road, past the many stalls hawking mostly touristy kitsch.
Pagoda Street ends on South Bridge Road and immediately to your right,
you will see the Sri Mariamman Temple. Take off your shoes and
tiptoe in to take a look, pausing to observe the intricately carved
gopuram (gate statuary) above the entrance and the nonchalant cow
statues perched on the roofs. Further
down South Bridge Road you will see a number of Chinese
herbal medicine shops, ready to cure anything that ails you with
unlikely ingredients including dried seahorses and snake skin.

After the shops, you'll soon spot a gigantic vermilion four-story
Chinese pavilion. This is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (completed in 2007). The holy relic in question is housed on the fourth floor and if you arrive before 11 am, you'll may even have a chance to gaze
upon it from a distance before the curtain shuts. On the roof, you'll
find 10,000 miniature Buddhas and a giant Tibetan-style prayer wheel.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Feeling
peckish for lunch? Then turn right to Smith Street for a row of gentrified hawker stalls prettified for touristsor
left into Maxwell Food Centre, which doesn't score much points for ambiance but does serve some very good local food. Pick the stall with
the longest queue and dig in! Be sure to leave some room for dessert at
Tong Heng at 285 South Bridge Road, famed for its egg tarts. Properly
stuffed, it's time to take a break and digest all that at Tea Chapter (down the street at 9 Neil Road), where you are introduced to a Chinese tea ceremony for as
little as SDG8. This is not an experience to be rushed, particularly if
you opt for one of the better grades of tea.